Services Shutdown Time

Windows XP has the service shutdown time set to 20000 ms which equals 20 secs. To change this go to regedit and change this key :
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ControlWaitToKillServiceTimeout
setting it to 5-10sec should do the trick (that would be 5000-10000)
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Prefetcher Tweak
(by Crapito)

This is an unique technique for XP, which could improve the performance significantly by tweaking the prefetcher. Recommended hardware: PIII 800 or higher, 512M RAM or more.

1. Run "regedit";
2. Go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ControlSession Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters\EnablePrefetcher